Ancient Town-Planning Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 3. PLAN OF SELINUS]

[19] Koldewey and Puchstein, _Die griech. Tempel in Unteritalien und Sicilien_, p. 90, plan 29, from Cavallari; Hulot and Fougeres, _Selinonte_, Paris, 1910, pp. 121, 168, 196. The latter writers a.s.sign the rebuilding to Hermocrates, 408-407 B.C. But our accounts of Hermocrates do not suggest that he rebuilt anything at Selinus of any sort, except defences.

_Cyrene_ (fig. 4).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 4. PLAN OF CYRENE]

At Cyrene the researches of two English archaeologists about 1860 disclosed a town-plan based, like that of Selinus, on two main streets which crossed at right angles (fig. 4). Here, however, the other streets do not seem to have been planned uniformly at right angles to the two main thoroughfares, and the rectangular scheme is therefore less complete and definite than at Selinus. Cyrene, unfortunately, resembles Selinus in another respect, that we have no proper knowledge of the date when its main streets were laid out. It was founded somewhere in the seventh century B.C. and Pindar, in an ode written about 466 B.C., mentions a great processional highway there. Whether this was one of the two roads above mentioned is not clear. But it is not probable, since Pindar's road seems hardly to have been inside the city at all.[20]

[20] Smith and Porcher, _Discoveries at Cyrene_ (1864), plate 40; hence Studnickza, _Kyrene_ (1890, p. 167, fig. 35), and Malten, _Kyrene_ (Berlin, 1911). For Pindar's reference see Pyth. v. 90 and p. 16 above.

In these two cases and in one or two others which might be noted from the same or later times, the town-scheme includes rectangular elements without any strict resemblance to the chess-board pattern. The dominant feature is the long straight street, of great width and splendour, which served less as the main artery of a town than as a frontage for great buildings and a route for solemn processions. Here, almost as in Babylon, we have the spectacular element which architects love, but which is, in itself, insufficient for the proper disposition of a town. Long and ample streets, such as those in question, might easily be combined, as indeed they are combined in some modern towns of southern Europe and Asia, with squalid and ill-grouped dwelling-houses. Hippodamus himself aimed at something much better, as Aristotle tells us. But it was not till after 350 B.C. or some approximate date, that dwelling-houses were actually arranged and grouped on a definite system.[21]

[21] Soluntum, near Palermo, on the north coast of Sicily, was found by Cavallari in 1875 to exhibit a rectangular street-plan; one main street ran north and south along level ground and several lesser streets lay at right angles to it mounting a hillside by means of steps (as at Priene, p. 42). See the _Bullettino delta Commissione di Antichita e Belle Arti in Sicilia_, viii. Palermo, August 1875. Cavallari himself a.s.signed this plan to the date when Soluntum was founded--which is unfortunately uncertain--but only on the general ground that 'in una citta, una volta tracciate le strade e disposte le arterie dicommunicazione, non e facile cambiarne la disposizione generale'. I attach less weight than he does to this reason.

Soluntum was in the main and by origin a Phoenician town, with a Greek colouring; in 307 B.C. it was refounded for the discharged soldiers of Agathocles; later still, in Roman times, it had the rank of 'municipium'; most of its ruins are generally considered to be of Roman date and small objects found in it are also mostly Roman, and its street-plan may also be Roman. As the 'Bullettino'

is somewhat rare, I add a reduced plan (fig. 5).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 5. SOLUNTUM]

It was probably, however, in the first half of the fourth century that the Greek cities began to pa.s.s by-laws relating to the police, the scavenging and the general public order of their markets and streets, and to establish Agoranomi to control the markets and Astynomi to control the streets. These officials first appear in inscriptions after 350, but are mentioned in literature somewhat earlier. An account of the Athenian const.i.tution, ascribed formerly to Xenophon and written (as is now generally agreed) about 430-424 B.C., mentions briefly the prosecution of those who built on to the public land, that is (apparently), who encroached upon the streets. But it is silent as to specific officers, Astynomi or other. Plato, however, in his 'Laws', which must date a little earlier than his death in 347, alludes on several occasions to such officers. They were to look after the private houses 'in order that they may all be built according to laws', and to police and clean the roads and water-channels, both inside and outside of the city. A prohibition of balconies leaning over the public streets, and of verandas projecting into them, is also mentioned in two or three writers of the fourth century and is said to go back to a much earlier date, though its antiquity was probably exaggerated.[22]

[22] Plato, _Laws_ 763 c, 779 c, &c.; Aristotle, _Ath. Pol._ 50; Arist., _Oec._ ii. 5, p. 134; Xenophon, _Ath. Pol._ iii. 4; Schol. to Aeschines, iii. 24. The fact that the word 'Astynomos'

occurs in Aeschylus does not justify the writer of an article in Pauly-Wissowa (_Real-Encycl._ ii. 1870) in stating that magistrates of this t.i.tle were already at work in the earlier part of the fifth century; the poet uses the noun in a general sense from which it was afterwards specialized. Some of the regulations recur at Rome (p. 137).

The munic.i.p.al by-laws which these pa.s.sages suggest clearly came into use before, though perhaps not long before, the middle of the fourth century. They do not directly concern town-planning; they involve building regulations only as one among many subjects, and those regulations are such as might be, and in many cases have been, adopted where town-planning was unknown. But they are natural forerunners of an interest in town-planning. As in modern England, so in fourth-century Greece, their appearance suggests the growth of a care for well-ordered town life and for munic.i.p.al well-being which leads directly to a more elaborate and methodical oversight of the town as an organized combination of houses and groups of houses.

As we part from this early Greek town-planning, we must admit that altogether we know little of it. There was such a thing: among its main features was a care for stately avenues: its chief architect was Hippodamus. Thus much is clear. But save in so far as Milchhofer's plans reproduce the Piraeus of B.C. 450 or 400, we cannot discern either the shape or the size of the house-blocks, or the grouping adopted for any of the ordinary buildings, or the scheme of the ordinary roads. We may even wonder whether such things were of much account in the town-planning of that period.

CHAPTER IV

GREEK TOWN-PLANNING: THE MACEDONIAN AGE, 330-130 B.C.

The Macedonian age brought with it, if not a new, at least a more systematic, method of town-planning. That was the age when Alexander and his Macedonian army conquered the East and his successors for several generations ruled over western Asia, when Macedonians and Greeks alike flocked into the newly-opened world and Graeco-Macedonian cities were planted in bewildering numbers throughout its length and breadth. Most of these cities sprang up full-grown; not seldom their first citizens were the discharged Macedonian soldiery of the armies of Alexander and his successors. The map of Turkey in Asia is full of them. They are easily recognized by their names, which were often taken from those of Alexander and his generals and successors, their wives, daughters, and relatives. Thus, one of Alexander's youngest generals, afterwards Seleucus I, sometimes styled Nicator, founded several towns called Seleucia, at least three called Apamea, and others named Laodicea and Antiochia, thereby recording himself, his Iranian wife Apama, his mother Laodice and his father Antiochus, and his successors seem to have added other towns bearing the same name.

Indeed, two-thirds of the town-names which are prominent in the later history of Asia Minor and Syria, date from the age of Alexander and his Macedonians.

Many discoveries show that these towns were laid out with a regular 'chess-board' street-plan. That method of town-planning now made definite entry into the European world. No architect or statesman is recorded to have invented or systematically encouraged it. Alexander himself and his architect, one Dinocrates of Rhodes or perhaps of Macedonia, seem to have employed it at Alexandria in Egypt, and this may have set the fas.h.i.+on. Seven years after Alexander's death it recurs at Nicaea in Bithynia, which was refounded by one of Alexander's successors in 323 B.C. and was laid out on this fas.h.i.+on.

But no ancient writer credits either the founder or the architect of Alexandria or the founder of Nicaea with any particular theory on the subject. If the chess-board fas.h.i.+on becomes now, with seeming suddenness, the common--although not the universal--rule, that is probably the outcome of the developments sketched in the last chapter.

Approximations to chess-board planning had been here and there employed in the century before Alexander. When his conquests and their complicated sequel led, amongst other results, to the foundation of many new towns, it was natural that the most definite form of planning should be chosen for general use.

We might, however, wonder whether its adoption was helped by the military character of the generals who founded, and the discharged soldiers who formed the first inhabitants of so many among these towns. Military men are seldom averse to rigidity. It is worth noting, in this connexion, that when chess-board planning came into common use in the Roman Empire, many--perhaps most--of the towns to which it was applied were 'coloniae' manned by time-expired soldiers. So, too, in the Middle Ages and even in comparatively modern times, the towns laid out with rectangular street-plans in northern Italy, in Provence, in the Rhine Valley, are for the most part due in some way or other to military needs.[23] In our own days rectangular planning is a dominant feature of the largest and newest industrial towns. They are adapting a military device to the purposes of an industrial age.

[23] Since the invention of artillery, the rectangular street-plan has been regarded by soldiers as useful in defending the streets of a town. Aristotle, however, expressly observes in the _Politics_ that, in street warfare, tortuous lanes were far better than straight avenues for the defence, and he recommends that the rectangular pattern should be adopted only 'in parts and in places', though he does not explain how this would work out (_Politics,_ iv. 11, p. 1330).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 6. GENERAL OUTLINE OF PRIENE.

A, B, C. Gates. D, E, F, H, M, P. Temples (see fig. 7). G. Agora, Market. I. Council House, K. Prytaneion. L, Q. Gymnasium. N. Theatre, O. Water-reservoir, R. Race-course.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 7. PART OF PRIENE AS EXCAVATED 1895-8.

(From the large plan by Wiegand and Schrader.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 8. PRIENE, PANORAMA OF THE TOWN.

(As restored by Zippelius.)]

_Priene_ (figs. 6-8).

The best instance of the new system is not perhaps the most famous.

Priene was a little town on the east coast of the Aegean. The high ridge of Mycale towered above it; Miletus faced it across an estuary; Samos stood out seawards to the west. In its first dim days it had been perched on a crag that juts out from the overhanging mountain; there its life began, we hardly know when, in the dawn of Greek history. But it had been worn down in the fifth century between the upper and the nether millstone of the rival powers of Samos and Miletus. Early in the Macedonian age it was refounded. The old Acropolis was given up. Instead, a broad sloping terrace, or more exactly a series of terraces, nearer the foot of the hill, was laid out with public buildings--Agora, Theatre, Stoa, Gymnasium, Temples, and so forth--and with private houses. The whole covered an area of about 750 yds. in length and 500 yds. in width. Priene was, therefore, about half the size of Pompeii (p. 63). It had, as its excavators calculate, about 400 individual dwelling-houses and a population possibly to be reckoned at 4,000.

In the centre was the Agora or market-place, with a temple and other large buildings facing on to it; round them were other public buildings and some eighty blocks of private houses, each block measuring on an average 40 x 50 yds. and containing four or five houses. The broader streets, rarely more than 23 ft. wide, ran level along the terraces and parallel to one another. Other narrower streets, generally about 10 ft. wide, ran at right angles up the slopes, with steps like those of the older Scarborough or of a.s.sisi.[24] The whole area has not yet been explored and we do not know whether the houses were smaller or larger, richer or poorer, in one quarter than in another, but the regularity of the street-plan certainly extended over the whole site.

[24] Compare Soluntum, p. 36, n. 2.

Despite this reasoned and systematic arrangement, no striking artistic effects appear to have been attempted. No streets give vistas of stately buildings. No squares, save that of the Agora--120 by 230 ft.

within an encircling colonnade--provide open s.p.a.ces where larger buildings might be grouped and properly seen. Open s.p.a.ces, indeed, such as we meet, in mediaeval and Renaissance Italy or in modern English towns of eighteenth century construction, were very rare in Priene. Gardens, too, must have been almost entirely absent. In the area as yet uncovered, scarcely a single dwelling-house possessed any garden ground or yard.[25]

[25] Wiegand and Schrader, _Priene, Ergebnisse der Ausgrabung in den Jahren 1895-8_ (Berlin, 1904). Professor P. Gardner gave a good account to the Town-Planning Conference (_Proceedings_, pp.

112-122). I am indebted to him for two of my ill.u.s.trations.

_Miletus_ (fig. 9).

The skill of German archaeologists has revealed what town-planning meant in a small town rebuilt in the Alexandrine period. No other even approximately complete example has been as yet uncovered on any other site. But spade-work at the neighbouring and more famous city of Miletus has uncovered similar street-planning there. In one quarter, the only one yet fully excavated, the streets crossed at right angles and enclosed regular blocks of dwelling-houses measuring 32 x 60 yds.

(according to the excavators) but sub-divided into blocks of about 32 yds. square (fig. 9). These blocks differ somewhat in shape from those of Priene, which are more nearly square; whether they differ in date is more doubtful. They are certainly not earlier than the Macedonian era, and one German archaeologist places the building or rebuilding of this quarter of Miletus after that of Priene and in a 'late h.e.l.lenistic' and apparently Roman period. There is unquestionably much Roman work in Miletus; there seems, however, no sufficient reason for ascribing the house-blocks shown on fig. 7 to any date but some part of the Macedonian period. Though differently shaped, they do not differ very greatly in actual area from those of Priene. They are somewhat smaller, but only by about 60 sq. yds. in each average-sized plot.[26]

[26] Wiegand, _Abhandlungen der Berliner Akademie_, 1911, Anhang; _Archaol. Anzeiger_, 1911, 420 foll.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 9. MILETUS, AS EXCAVATED BY WIEGAND.

(_Archologischer Anzeiger_, 1911, p. 421.)]

_Alexandria_.

A yet more famous town, founded by Alexander himself, is definitely recorded by ancient writers to have been laid out in the same quasi-chess-board fas.h.i.+on, with one long highway, the Canopic Street, running through it from end to end for something like four miles.[27]

Unfortunately the details of the plan are not known with any certainty. Excavations were conducted at the instigation of Napoleon III in 1866 by an Arab archaeologist, Mahmud Bey el Fallaki, and, according to him, showed a regular and rectangular scheme in which seven streets ran east and west while thirteen ran north and south at right angles to them. The house-blocks divided by these streets were thought to vary somewhat in size but to measure in general about 300 x 330 metres.[28] More recent research, however, has not confirmed Mahmud's plans. The excavations of Mr. Hogarth and M. Botti suggest that many of his lines are wrong and that even his Canopic Street is incorrectly laid down. Mr. Hogarth, indeed, concludes that 'it is hopeless now to sift his work; those who would treat the site of Alexandria scientifically must ignore him and start _de novo_'. More recent excavation, carried out by Dr. Noack in 1898-9, seemed to show that the ancient streets which can now be traced beneath Alexandria belong to a Roman age, though they may of course follow older lines, and that, if some items in Mahmud's plans are possibly right, the errors and omissions are serious. We may accept as certain the statement that Alexandria was laid out with a rectangular town-plan; we cannot safely a.s.sume that Mahmud has given a faithful picture of it.[29]

[27] Strabo, xvii. 793.

[28] Mahmud Bey, _Memoire sur l'ancienne Alexandrie_ (Copenhagen, 1872); Neroutsos Bey, _L'ancienne Alexandrie_ (Paris, 1888).

[29] D.G. Hogarth, _Archaeological Report of the Egypt Exploration Fund_, 1894-5, p. 28, and _h.e.l.lenic Journal_, xix.

326; F. Noack, _Athen. Mitteil._ xxv. (1900), pp. 232, 237. Dr.

Noack thought that his results confirmed Mahmud; to me, as to some others, they seem rather to yield the conclusions indicated in the text.